The first launch

Launching Monkey the first time.

The first time I launched Monkey, Beth Follet, who is the publisher of Pedlar Press, and who also is a writer, arranged to have the launch be at the Rivoli, a club that's in Toronto, as part of something that is called This Is Not A Reading Series, (TINARS) which is done by Pages bookstore, which is located on Queen St West. The launch was shared with Shary Boyle, for whom Conundrum Press was launching her book called Witness My Shame.

I do like Pages bookstore quite a lot, I like the Rivoli a lot, and also do like Shary Boyle a lot, and my family lives there in Toronto, and it was a joy to share the evening with them, and to meet with Beth, who is so absolutely great, and whom I do think the world of, and I was surprised by Stuart Ross being there, who published my first book called Hit By A Rock, which was not a novel, but rather a collection of short pieces, and who I hadn't seen in a very long, too long a time, in fact, and so it all was quite agreeable.

It was a big production, which was a joy and was a bother, and it did involve my friends, which was exciting for me, because they really are quite talented, and they really are quite lovely all around. It would take a lot to just describe what happened and what it was we did, because of course I didn't read, so I had to do some other sort of thing that would present and/or represent the book.

And what I did was quite involved. And it all was, sort of was, totally chaotic, and was a lot of fun, and was typically a sort of Lipsink thing - but was it really anything that was a Monkey thing?

This is what I always have been wondering.

Lipsink is a thing that I really can't describe. You must experience it in order that you really come to understand it in some way or know it in some way. There are some archived remnants of some previous occasions of doing Lipsynk that you can see and hear on my site mboyce.com - and you can get an understanding of the work of oculart, and other people who participated, at their various websites, which you can link to off my side bar over there.

But unless you were tuned in, or were at the launching at the Rivoli, you cannot really get it what it is, and I cannot explain it or describe it because it would be too boring and uninteresting to try and do that for anybody anyway, at least in writing anyway. I could maybe do it over drinks, but I couldn't bother doing it in writing.

But I could deliberate a little bit on the question I have asked, which is, was the first launch really anything that was conveying the way that Monkey had been made?

I would say no before I would say yes, but then once I had said no, I think that I would think again, and then maybe I'd say yes.

It might not be that obvious why I would say yes, why the answer would be yes, why and how it was conveying in some way the way that I made Monkey, but that is why it's interesting to me. It's interesting for me to think about the way the answer could be yes.

This is what the press release had said on the pagesbook.ca site advertising for the TINARS (This is not a reading series):
Using video, new media and telephone Michael Boyce aims to extend to the performance space-and perhaps even beyond!-the experimentation he engaged in to write Monkey, a novel which combines the dynamics of "superhero comics, kung fu movies, Taoism and Gertrude Stein." Come celebrate the launch of this exciting first novel and who knows, you may end up celebrating with the rest of the wide wonderful world. (That's a hint.)

The hint of course relates to the Lipsink broadcast, using lipsink.oculart.com to broadcast on the internet everything we were presenting from Toronto, Montreal, Banff and New York City.

I wouldn't argue with the way the novel is described, but I wonder now about the comment about experimentation that I engaged in to write Monkey.

First of all did I engage in any sort of an experiment in writing Monkey?

I might think that I should say that kind of thing to some foundation for arts that might support my writing by giving me some money to help support me while I write. But they never give me any money, so I don't know why I bother asking anybody, to start with, and more to the point, I don't know why I bother saying things like that when it's much more interesting to say the sort of things I'm interested in saying in the ways I like to say them, which at least does let me have the satisfaction then of having said something to someone that I think has been worthwhile to say, and that I care about enough so as to mitigate the injury from the rejection that's inevitably coming.

Arts foundations may like artists to say that they are going to experiment with something, like as if it is a science, because that could make it closer to a thing that makes some sort of business sense, if they like to think that business is like science, and if they like to think that anything like science is better for them to give their money and support towards.

But I think making art is more about some other kind of thing, that really isn't like something like business or like science. And that is why it can be interesting to mix them up sometimes, through their practitioners, because they all are something different, and why should they be made to be something that's the same?

Anyway - although I have, for the sake of saying something that could be taken in some kind of way, said that Monkey was experimental writing, it is not experimental writing and it was not any sort of an experiment.

My friend Kath Cowie said that she thought that it was avant garde, which pleases me, but that is not the same as saying that it is experimental writing.

I think that anyone who says "experimental writing" instead of saying "avant garde," might be saying so because they're tired of saying "avant garde," - perhaps because it was a thing that people said more often long ago. But I do not think that they're the same, "experimental writing" and "avant garde."

I do like it if someone, especially someone like Kathy Cowie, who is an awesome artist, says it's avant garde.

But I wouldn't say that it was avant garde, because who am I to say a thing like that? How could it ever be a thing like that for me? I wrote it, after all, so naturally it is a thing for me that when I was writing it was now, and which now of course is then, so how could it ever be a thing for me that is avant garde?

It may have been interesting for me to say that Monkey is experimental writing so that a community of writers, who are tired of saying work is avant garde, might embrace me as a part of their community, if I thought that it was interesting to be a part of that. And I think I may have thought that it might be, but not I do not know that it would be, and I do not care to purchase any membership on the basis of my saying that my writing is experimental.

Or I may have said it was experimental writing as a way of giving warning to anyone I might believe might have trouble reading it, or be disappointed when they found out that it was not the sort of writing that Alice Monroe or someone like her might be doing, and which they might prefer, I might think - and if they did prefer that then I might think that they might be disappointed and try to warn them about that.

But who really is to say?

Who really is to say what anybody's going to like or find it interesting to read? I can like a lot of different things. Alice Monroe is someone I can like to read as much as Getrude Stein, Samual Beckett and James Joyce, and also Michael Bendis and Jack Kerouac and William Gibson and Neil Stephenson, and Margaret Atwood too. So why should I assume that mostly anybody else isn't just as varied in their tastes as I?

And I am disappointed to be thinking that I ever should be saying something like that sort of thing, that Monkey is experimental writing, when it does not describe what Monkey is at all.

Monkey is not experimental writing. I don't think it is, in any case.

I do think that there are many ways that are more interesting for me to be describing what it is or what its interest is, or what I was doing with it while I wrote it and how I was thinking about what it was as literature.

It is different, that seems to be the case for anyone who's read it, that they do believe it's different, and that is gratifying that they do think that it is different, because I do care for it to be something that is different.

So then that is a success.

I was not experimenting when I wrote it, but I was doing something, when I wrote it, with the way that it was being writing, and with what it I though that it was doing as it was being literature.

It's interesting to me that it is literature.

It can be anything of course at any time that is related to it being something that is written, and one of those things, then, that it can be, is something that is literature.

That means that there are customs and conventions, and maybe explorations, and experiments as well, and challenges, and departures and returns, and all those sorts of things that can be any sort of a relationship to what has been, and what there is, and what, of course, there might be coming up.

Think about jazz music.

There was a time when anyone who was someone who was seriously playing jazz, was listening to someone who played it before they did, and to anyone who was playing it right now, and were thinking about how they might do it differently, and be someone who would add a little something to whatever was evolving, and so they would make their stamp.

They often did this with a great deal of respect, even though they also were a little challenging, and a little bit competing, but they were very keen about doing something that was adding to the pioneering and the evolution of the playing of their instrument, and the playing of the music, which they were all together playing.

Some did also later call some things that some of them were doing, experimental music or experimental jazz, and any of them might have been offended, or been pleased, to have been said to be someone who was doing something of that sort, but a lot of them would also say that they were only playing music, and developing their music, and taking it into the direction of their thinking and their feeling, and trying to take it further to develop it, and make it, and allow it to be evolving in themselves and through their playing, through their instruments, and through the music they were playing.

It was also like this in painting for awhile. And it was like this in other sorts of music too, even in rock music for a while. And it also was like this in plays and in film and in acting and in dancing, and lately it has been like this sometimes in television too. And of course it has been like this in literature as well - in prose and poetry.

Anyone who is a writer can be thinking about what they're doing, and about the way that what they're doing is a way of doing something, and that this way of doing something can be trying to do something before it actually is doing it, that it can be exploring something to see if it will work, and that this could be what you might call experimenting - or you could also call it practice.

You could say that experimental writing is writing that is practicing.

This sort of writing that is practicing could be interesting to read, or not.

This sort of writing that is practicing could be interesting to always do, or do a lot, and then allow yourself to be called, and to call yourself, an experimental writer.

But this is not what I am doing or am intending to be doing.

I do not care to show hardly anyone my practicing. But I do care to show anyone my writing.

My writing could, of course, always be construed by anyone who really cared to do so, likely, as really being anything of whatever I might say it's not.

That can be always done with almost anything - show how it is really what it says it's not. And that is interesting.

But what is also interesting is what anybody says their writing is and why they say it is that way, and not seek to find the contradiction and destabilize the saying, and not be too concerned with proving they are wrong.

Anybody can be wrong, and anybody can be right, and so what is really interesting to me, is what anybody cares to say, because it shows the sort of thing they care about, and thus the sort of person that they are, and the way they see the world, and how they care to be with other people living in the world.

It could be called the heart of them, and it could be called their spirit. And if you have an interest in such things, then you might not care so much to prove them wrong or make them seem to be fundamentally always in a contradiction, because anybody can be said to be at any time always in a contradiction.

And even anyone who points it out can be subject also to such a pointing out as well.

So anyway, Monkey isn't what I'd call experimental writing, because it's not experimenting, because it isn't practicing to do something; it actually is doing it.

It could be said that it has done it well or not, but it certainly is doing it.

Well, but did I practice it before I did it? Well, maybe in a way I have, I did, but I wouldn't really say I have or did.

Practicing my writing has not been ever much of anything like practicing to play an instrument.

In some ways it has been like practicing kung fu - a certain sort of kung fu that's to say.

Not all kung fu is the same or looks the same or is taught the same with the same idea. And that just all makes sense, because there is no kung fu really, not any one kung fu that is the prime kung fu, because kung fu is a discipline, it is discipline itself, and so that means that it is sorted out by schools and individuals, which is to say by groups and individuals, whether they be students, or be masters, or be teachers, or whatever, in many different ways that often are contentious in the way that they are different, but can also be complementary to each other too.

My writing, like anybody's writing, could be said to be in this way, actually a practicing, insofar as it is like the way a certain sort of kung fu could be said to always be a sort of practicing, and always is becoming what it is, even though it also always is unfolding as it is, and not becoming anything, but rather is expressing what it is.

It all depends on how you measure it and if you care to measure it.

I sometimes care to measure it to see if it is being what I care that it be doing.

So I would rather say my writing is kung fu than say that it's experimental writing.

I know that it can easily confuse anyone I say that to, and that I would have to qualify it usually, but I think that is a good thing that I need to do that if I care to not be glib.

I did do things with Monkey that were like getting out there on the stage and playing something more than what you might have played before, that was like getting out there on the track or field and doing something more than what you did before, that was like making moves that you had never done that well before, and giving more than you done before, but which you had been building up to do.

I had been building up to do it.

I had been thinking all along about the different ways of doing it. I had been pondering and wondering and growing my conviction to be doing it some way. And then eventually I did it.

In this way the blurb was right to say that the launching at the Rivoli was consistent with the way that I made Monkey. Because before I did launch Monkey I thought about the launch in the way that was consistent also with how I had been building up to making Monkey, by thinking and preparing and considering and practicing and deliberating about how I would be doing it, and what could be interesting about doing it that way, and what other ways there might be that also could be interesting, and maybe I would do that too, or do that at some other time - and so like that.

In that way, the blurb is right. If experimentation means those things, and I do suppose that it can mean those things, I do dare to think that it could mean those things, then yes, my presentation was an indication of another thing where I did do something similar in order that I could then do what I did do.

This then made the presentation be a little bit in this way similar to doing Monkey, when I was doing it. But I was, of course I was, doing something rather different, and it wasn't much like Monkey really, not in much of any other way besides in how it was a thing that I did do, like anything that I would do, and which always is, in this way, showing some of my kung fu.

And it was different from Monkey especially, because I did this thing, this launch, with a lot of other people, whereas I did Monkey on my own.

I had some feedback doing Monkey that influenced me in some ways, especially from Ravi Rajakumar, but this is not the same as what anyone was doing on that night that Monkey launched the first time at the Rivoli.

I'm tired of talking about this right now. Some other time I'll talk about the second launch of Monkey.